Dead Water

“Have you found him?”

“We have, yes. Yesterday evening, at low tide.”

“Where?”

“About four miles along the coast.”

“It was deliberate, Fox.”

“So I understand. Coombe saw it.”

“Yes. Well now, that’s quite enough,” said Curtis.

Fox stepped back.

“Wait a minute,” Alleyn said. “Anything on him? Fox? Anything on him?”

“All right. Tell him.”

“Yes, Mr. Alleyn, there was. Very sodden. Pulp almost, but you can make it out. The top copy of that list, and the photograph.”

“Ah!” Alleyn said. “She gave them to him. I thought as much.”

He caught his breath and then closed his eyes. “That’s right,” Curtis said. “You go to sleep again.”

“My sister, Fa

“My dear Miss Emily, aren’t you, yourself, falling into Mrs. Winterbottom’s weakness for exaggeration? Miss Cost’s murder had nothing to do with your decision on the future of the spring.”

“But it had,” said Miss Emily, smacking her gloved hand on the arm of Superintendent Coombe’s rustic seat. “Let us have logic. If I had not persisted with my decision, her nervous system, to say nothing of her emotions (at all times unstable) would not have been exacerbated to such a degree that she would have behaved as she did.”

“How do you know?” Alleyn asked. “She might have cut up rough on some other provocation. She had her evidence. The possession of a dangerous instrument is, in itself, a danger. Even if you had never visited the Island, Miss Emily, Barrimore and Mayne would still have laughed at the Festival.”

“She would have been less disturbed by their laughter,” said Miss Emily. She looked fixedly at Alleyn. “I am tiring you, no doubt,” she said. “I must go. Those kind children are waiting in the motor. I merely called to say au revoir, my dear Rodrigue.”

“You are not tiring me in the least, and your escort can wait. I imagine they are very happy to do so. It’s no good, Miss Emily. I know you’re eaten up with curiosity.”

“Not curiosity. A natural dislike for unexplained details.”

“I couldn’t sympathize more. What details?”

“No doubt you are always asked when you first began to suspect the criminal. When did you first begin to suspect Dr. Mayne?”

“When you told me that, at about twenty to eight, you stood with your back to the enclosure, looking down at Fisherman’s Bay, and saw nobody but Wally Trehern.”

“And I should have seen Dr. Mayne?”

“You should have seen him pulling out from the fishermen’s jetty in his launch. And then Trehern, quite readily, said he saw the Doctor leaving in his launch about five past eight. Why should he lie about the time he left? And what, as Trehern pointed out, did he do in the half-hour that elapsed?”

“Did you not believe that poor woman when she accounted for the half-hour?”

“Not for a second. If he had been with her, she would have said so when I first interviewed her. He has a patient in the hotel, and she could have quite easily given that as a reason and would have wanted to provide him with an alibi. Did you notice his look of astonishment when she cut in? Did you notice how she stopped him before he could say anything? No, I didn’t believe her and I think he knew I didn’t.”

“And that, you consider, was why he ran away?”

“Partly that, perhaps. He may have felt,” Alleyn said, “quite suddenly, that he couldn’t take it. He may have had his moment of truth. Imagine it, Miss Emily. The blinding realization that must come to a killer — the thing that forces so many of them to give themselves up or to bolt or to commit suicide. Suppose we had believed her and they had gone away together. For the rest of his life he would have been tied to the woman he loved by the most appalling obligation it’s possible to imagine.”

“Yes,” she said. “He was a proud man, I think. You are right. Pray go on.”

“Mayne had spoken to Miss Cost before church. She was telling Mrs. Carstairs she would go to the spring after the service and collect the necklace that had been left on the shelf. She ran after Mayne, and Mrs. Carstairs went in to church. We don’t know what passed between them; but I think she may, poor creature, have made some final advance and been rebuffed. She must have armed herself with her horrid little snapshot and list of dates, and been carrying them about in her bag, pla

“Did she…?”

“Yes. It was in the mailbag.”

“You said, I think, that you did not, normally, intercept Her Majesty’s mail.”

“I believe I did,” said Alleyn blandly. “Nor do we. Normally.”

“Go on.”

“He knew she was going to the spring. He was no doubt on the lookout as he washed his hands at the sink in the Tretheways’ cottage. It’s below a back window from which you get an uninterrupted view of Wally’s Way and the enclosure. He must have seen Wally mopping and mowing at you. He probably saw you pin up your notice. He saw Barrimore tear it down, and go away. He went up and let himself in. He had admittance disks and used one when we sent for him. He hid behind the top boulder and waited for Miss Cost. He knew, of course, that there were loose rocks up there. He was extremely familiar with the terrain.”

“Ah, yes.”

“When it was over he scraped away his footprints. Later on, when we were there, he was very quick to get up to the higher level and walk over it. Any prints of his that might be left would thus appear to be i

“It gives me an unpleasant frisson when I remember that he also examined mine,” said Miss Emily. “A cool, resourceful man. I rather liked him.”

“So did I,” Alleyn said. “I liked him. He intended us, of course, to follow up the idea of mistaken identity, but he was too clever to push it overmuch. If we hadn’t discovered that you visited the spring, he would have said he’d seen you. As it was, he let us find out for ourselves. He hoped Wally would be thought to have done it and would have given evidence of his irresponsibility and seen him bestowed in a suitable institution, which, as he very truly observed, might be the best thing for him, after all.”

“I shall do something about that boy,” said Miss Emily. “There must be special schools. I shall attend to it.” She looked furiously at Alleyn. “What would you have done if the lights had not failed, or if you had caught up with him?”

“Routine procedure, Miss Emily. Asked him to come to Coombe’s office and make a statement. I doubt if we had a case against him. Too much conjecture. I hoped, by laying so much of the case open, to induce a confession. Once the Wally theory was dismissed, I think Mayne would not have allowed Barrimore, or anyone else, to be arrested. But I’m glad it turned out as it did.”

“You do not,” Miss Emily observed, “feel thwarted of your prey.”

“No, Miss Emily. Not this time.” And, after a pause, Alleyn repeated: “I liked him.”

Fox came through the gate into Coombe’s garden. “Bonjour, mademoiselle,” he said laboriously. “J’espère que vous êtes en bo